Never before has the development of the world society depended so much on knowledge and information. Thus, it is plausible to recognize the enormous importance of universities throughout the world. The university feeds and is fed by some of the grave contradictions and dilemmas of this period of crisis of meanings and of spectacular changes. As locus and actor, it embraces and stimulates the contradictions and hybridism of different modes of production, circulation and uses of knowledge: the traditional "mode 1", closed and disciplinary, and the new "mode 2", open, transdisciplinary, intensive and extensive on the uses it makes of information technologies. Knowledge production increases exponentially with the globalization of connectivity. The question is not only formal and quantitative. To discuss the role of universities and the process of knowledge production it is necessary to ponder on their meanings to the concrete existence of men and women on shaping their personal and social lives. Being a part of global society, universities tend to value "academic capitalism", typical of "knowledge economies". But they also hold the potential to contribute to the processes of building "democratic knowledge societies" and to recover their historic mission of promoting a civilizatory process.
University; Knowledge; Modes of knowledge production; Academic capitalism"; Democratic knowledge societies